How do your organize your theme park music?


Tannerman

Member
I tend to be a daily lurker to this site, amazed by the knowledge and collections of most of you. It's always educational, if not overwhelming, to say the least ;)

I thought I'd throw out this question... when it comes to your Disney theme park music files, like MP3s, how do you prefer organizing these? Do you have folders setup by theme park and then get more specific, such as by land? Or do you group by attraction or year? What system seems to work best for you?

Just curious!

- Steve
 
Generally by park and then inside each folder by park, subfolders are by attraction name, since usually I have multiple files or recordings related to a single attraction. If there's just a single file, it usually goes in a miscellaneous section.
 
Personally....i have mine like this..example folders...Disneyland/Tomorrowland/Carousel of Progress......and then the MP3s....its the easiest and simplest
 

Scott

Member
Sadly, I have c:/music...and then all the files in there. Pathetic, I know--I really need to sit down one of these weekends and organize the heck out of it. I'm sure I'm wasting tons of space with duplicates, inferior quality copies, etc. Plus, if someone asks if I have something, I end up having to dig through for quite a bit to see if I do or not. Maybe this thread will give me the prod I need to do something about that.
 

DavidG

Member
My DLRP files are simply sorted by Land (with the Studios being the 6th "land")... and then I have the mp3s meticulously named in the respective folder. Such as DLRP music/4 - Fantasyland/4 - Dumbo the Flying Elephant 01 - Whip and Spur.mp3 (the land number is repeated in the file name so it stays correctly sorted in any playlist... crazy, I know.)

The music I have from the other parks is in dire need of some organization.
 

Gurgitoy2

Active Member
I'm kind of anal about it. It's frustrating for me to find a track in one big folder. What I did was make a "Disney" folder, and inside that is "Theme Parks", then I've got each resort in a folder. Inside each resort is a folder for each respective theme park at that resort. Then in each theme park is a folder for each land. finally, in each land there are attraction folders if I've got more than one MP3 for it, otherwise it's just sitting in it's land folder.

I know that's a long trail, but it helps me narrow down specific tracks.
 
Sounds like some people should start using iTunes... ;)

As for myself, I usually do it in iTunes as such.

Name Of Song - Track # - Time - Artist (Park Name) - Album (Name Of CD or Land) - Size - Kind - Genre (Theme Park)
 

BLM07

Member
ParkAreaRide, Show or MovieRide, Show or Movie - Description

Wherever the first place that the ride, show or movie premiered is where the audio will go. There isn't much of a point having all of the information in the filename when extensive descriptions can go in the tag.

For albums its Park - Year - Album Name
(I do own a few albums, but I rip them so I don't have to mess with CDs).
 
I use RealPlayer to convert my disney cds into MP3 and then play them on Winamp (free equalizer) while working at my computer. Right now I have two large playlists: one for Disneyland (about 200 tracks) and another for everything else, which usually means films and the box set anthologies like "75 years of Music & Memories" (600+ tracks). I'll probably need to set up a third playlist for WDW, since I'm truly a west coaster at heart and I find it jarring to hear something from EPCOT jumping into my musical tour of the original Magic Kingdom. Usually when I'm working I'll just hit "shuffle" and be surprised by what I haven't heard in a while.

On the shelf, I confess that I'm happiest when my CD's are organized in order of theatrical release....good thing that I've come to embrace my inner geek...
 

Zarpman

Member
Before music collection players (Windows Media, iTunes, etc) came about, my Disney music was sorted much like most everyone else's in this thread:

My DocumentsMusicDisney[Resort Name][Park Name][Land][Attraction/Show]

In the last folder, all tracks related to that specific attraction were dumped in there. Sometimes it's just one or two music tracks from the attraction (as released on an Official Album), others would be bootlegged elements (n which case there was almost always a bootlegged composit "ride through" someone had thrown together I would also include). I always left covers and alternate versions not in the actual attraction in a separate folder for the respective album it came from:

My DocumentsMusicDisneyAlbums[Album Name]

Now that I use a Mac (and more specifically iTunes), my collection is a tad bit different. Everything is categorized in the iTunes Music Library with the Genre "Disney", and I have a Smart Playlist that looks for all music with that genre (to keep Bon Jovi from popping up in the list). Official releases are categorized as they should be, by album and artist name. Amateur, bootleg, andother unreleased recordings simply have [Unreleased] in the album field.

I rarely ever need to pull out the original CDs I used to rip the music to the computer. If I do, they are in a garbeled mess. If I even try to sort them by release date or by baprk, there are too many of them to keep separated and them when a new CD or two comes out, you have to re-arrange the entire collection. They just sit there and collect dust, only to be used if my hard drive decides to crash .
 
Re: Itunes question

Sorry to stray a little but I have a question for those of you who use Itunes. If I have all my music in folders like 1970s 1980s and so on but I have ever song added to my Itunes library is there anyway to get Itunes to just play songs in one folder? Say I only want to play songs in the 1970s folder is there a way to create a playlist for just those songs if they all have different titles? I have not been able to figure out a way.

Thanks for any help
 

mmouse

New Member
I'm a little confused by your question -- if the folders are outside of iTunes, try creating a playlist in iTunes (name it 1970s or whatever) and drag the folder over the playlist in the sidebar. It adds all the files in that folder for me.
Alternative: if these songs are already in the iTunes library, and they have 'years' set (use "Get Info" under the "File" menu to check), you can set up a new smart playlist to grab tracks whose year is between 1970 and 1979, for example.

>>Back on topic: I organize in iTunes by using the following form:
Track Name - Song Title
Artist - Park or "Land - Park" or actual Album Name (for official releases)
Album - Attraction or "Attraction - Land" or Land (if the song name is the attraction name)
Genre - Disney Park (separate from 'Disney' for my non-park tracks)

iTunes makes it easy to find things with it's search box in the upper right, but this naming system helps on my iPod, etc.
 
The songs are already in folders. The song titles do not include a category like year they only have song and artist. I know about the searches within itunes but the song titles have nothing in common other then being in the same folder on my computer. Do I drag the folder from windows explorer to itunes or do i drag it within itunes? I do not see a way in itunes to browse my individual folders. It just shows t he whole library at once.

Thanks again

Steve
 

Tannerman

Member
Well, since I posted this question, figure I should chime in. I tend to be a bit anal about organizing as well. File structure is Disney/[Resort Name]/[Theme Park Name]/[Land or "Other"]/TrackName.mp3. At this point, I'm not grouping by attraction, but making sure attraction name is in filename.

I got on board the iTune revolution in February with the purchase of an iPod, and frankly, it makes organization a lot easier. I'm keeping the same file structure, but also tagging the tracks heavily so that Smart Playlists can be very powerful.

Unlike the typical format used for tags on general music, I tend to use the following for Disney theme park tracks in iTunes

iTunes Field = Associated Theme Park Field
================
Name = Name of File (w/Attraction name also noted)
Artist = Theme Park Name
Album = Land
Grouping = If sourced from Official Album, original album title
Composer = Resort Name

With the above criteria, you can be pretty effective in creating playlists. I suppose you could switch out "Grouping" and use it for something else, like attraction name or the like.
 

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